


A Million Shadows [8/10]

by balthesar



Series: A Million Shadows [8]
Category: Torchwood
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-02
Updated: 2011-09-02
Packaged: 2017-10-23 09:07:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,746
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/248611
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/balthesar/pseuds/balthesar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>'Right, so I've got this in one,' Owen announced, leaning back in his chair. 'It's sleeping sickness. African trypanosomiasis. Call the W.H.O., let them sort it out.'</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Million Shadows [8/10]

"Right, so I've got this in one," Owen announced, leaning back in his chair. The team was assembled around the wide boardroom table, print-offs and photocopies scattered across the polished wood -- the front page of the _Guardian_ , the _Sun_ , the _Western Mail_ , charts of rates and distributions of infection, the usual conspiracy theory websites. Opening his arms, as if welcoming the wave of affection certain to wash over him with his pronouncement, he declared, "It's sleeping sickness. _African trypanosomiasis_. Call the W.H.O., let them sort it out."

"Mm," Jack agreed thoughtfully, holding up an annotated copy of _News Wales_. "Funny, but this doesn't _look_ like sub-Saharan Africa."

Owen shrugged. "Maybe the tse-tses thought it would be nice to take a holiday. I don't know. I don't study _bugs_. All the symptoms are there: fever, sore throat, neurological affects, the _sleeping_ and then _dying_ \--"

Toshiko cut him off. "Isn't it progressing a bit fast to be sleeping sickness?"

"Look, why are we arguing about this?" Owen asked, pausing from chewing on the end of his pen. "I don't know why it's _here_ instead of _there_ , I don't know why the cases are developing fast -- it's caused by a bloody _protozoa_ , maybe it's _evolving_ \--"

Raising her eyebrows, Gwen held up a marked-up photocopy of a brief encyclopaedia article. "It says here there's been treatment for sleeping sickness for nearly a century. So either the patients aren't responding to the medicine or they aren't _getting_ any, and that would be insane."

The table paused for a moment to consider that; even Owen looked slightly abashed at the logic.

Ianto appeared with a carafe of hot coffee and refilled everyone's cups. "There's one easy way of finding out," he noted mildly.

"What's that?" Owen demanded.

"Test infected blood."

Easy was always so relative, Jack thought wryly, but if they could scratch a few -- or all -- of their current theories off the list, it would help the investigation. What was that old quotation? 'Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.' Eliminate all the known terrestrial possibilities...

Jack's mind raced with the details. "Alright. Owen and Tosh, we're sending you to St. David's. You're going to be physicians, so get us some infected blood samples and see what they're doing treatment-wise, and--" Jack pressed his palms together in supplication as Ianto poured him a cup, "please try really hard not to catch it yourselves. Ianto, you're backup. Gwen, you're profiling. Invent us some doctors."

***

"My tag says 'Doctor Owen Harper' on it," Owen observed critically.

"That's your name," Gwen helpfully replied. She handed Toshiko a laminated nametag reading 'Haruko Davies'; Toshiko clipped it on and tucked a few empty glass vials in the pocket of her lab coat.

Owen gave Gwen a look. "You were supposed to be making up _new ones_. Like how Tosh's says _Haruko_. Like that," he said, tugging demonstratively on Tosh's nametag until she smacked his hand away.

Gwen smiled beatifically. "I wanted to make sure you'd remember it."

***

One very valuable thing Owen had learned over the years was -- nine times out of ten -- if you could fake it, you could make it. Say anything with enough confidence and people are likely to believe it. Do anything with conviction and people will trust you. Go anywhere, act like you're supposed to be there and people won't even pay attention. Hospitals were the easiest: for all they purported to be bastions of safety and health, sterile modern fortresses, any cockhead in a white coat with a modicum of attitude could just walk in.

Which was precisely what they were going to do.

Ianto parked in the visitors' area in front, booting up a laptop on the front passenger seat. Toshiko and Owen slipped into their coats; Toshiko double-checked the hanging nametag as Owen removed a stray button reading 'Amateur Gynaecologist'.

Ianto tapped at the keyboard, clicking through several screens. "It seems that most of the new infectious patients are in the south wing; everyone who's asleep but not dead yet seems to be practically in storage in one of the second-floor wards."

"Great," Owen replied. "At least they can't run away." Toshiko rolled her eyes as she grabbed a clipboard. Owen draped a stethoscope around his neck and they climbed out of the black SUV and headed inside.

Years of medical school, grueling residency and several years of practice meant that Owen's ability to bullshit a triage nurse or receptionist was exceptional. He was almost disappointed they didn't have to; a cursory glance at the white coat, nametag and purposeful walk satisfied the curiosity of the woman behind the emergency desk.

Toshiko and Owen walked through the double doors dividing the waiting room from the facilities, into the wide, cool white and seafoam green corridor. He couldn't help but feel a pang of familiarity and bitter separation at the surroundings. He'd deserved better than the rude and summary dismissal he'd got.

If Toshiko noticed how his mood changed, she didn't mention it. Instead, she handed him three empty, sterile vials from the stash in her pocket. "Don't waste them. I'll go upstairs for samples from the sleepers. You can get the ones down here." Owen nearly said something -- 'I hate dealing with patients' or 'Who died and made you Jack?' or 'Why don't you deal with the ones that move?' -- but thought better of it. At least he'd have more of a chance to observe the symptoms, and Tosh was less likely to botch a blood sample from the comatose.

"Meet you back at Ianto as soon as you're done." She smiled a little. "Be careful."

"Yeah, you too," Owen replied distractedly, grabbing a surgical facemask from the box by the closed ward doors and snapping it on.

***

Ianto presented Toshiko with an Irish Cream latte upon her return to the SUV.

"Mmm, thanks. You're wonderful."

"It's my job."

"Where's Owen?"

"Not back yet. Perhaps he's been detained for performing inappropriate medical procedures."

"That would be like him. Mmm."

***

Dr. Harper walked through the ward, his own breathing louder to his ears through the white mask. It was crowded, every bed occupied by a feverish patient. Most of them lay limply on sweat-soaked sheets, moaning and unmoving. Some were gripped by fits, twitching or shaking, or contorting in excruciating pain as their muscles rippled under their skin. Their eyes were glassy or unfocused. They screamed at hallucinations.

There was something terribly wrong, something so close -- Owen couldn't quite put his finger on it. He walked down the aisle between the double row of beds, periodically stopping to grab the clipboard from the end of a bed to check the chart. The nurses were efficient but overworked; the doctors hadn't a clue. Running his finger down the columns of vitals of a blonde woman gasping with pain, her left side jerking uncontrollably, he figured it out.

They were all _young_. Not children, but in their prime -- twenties or thirties, a few sturdy-looking forty-somethings. Most epidemics hit the elderly and children, the two populations with the weakest immune systems. So where were all the kids and pensioners? Owen racked his brain. One: they could've contracted the disease too, but died too quickly to have sat long in the hospital -- though if that were true, they were dying _fast_ , because he didn't see anyone in the ward younger than nineteen or older than forty-three. Two: they could've contracted it through their lifestyle -- something that the average youngish adult would do but children and old people wouldn't. But that ignored the highly-infectious nature of the disease, because even if they'd caught it doing something statistically strange, they'd have passed it on to their families anyway. Three? Fuck. Owen didn't have a clue.

In fact, the only thing he could be sure of was that it was _not_ African sleeping sickness.

There were only a few ways to contract _African trypanosomiasis_ \-- you could be bitten by an infected tse-tse fly, you could be a foetus and get it through your infected mother's placenta, or you could be a right idiot and fuck up in the laboratory with infected blood. That was it. Those were the only ways. Jack was being sarcastic at the meeting, but he was right: Owen didn't see mislocated swarms of African flies anywhere. The patients were all a bit old to catch it in the womb, and they sure as shit weren't all scientists.

Owen needed to investigate the infection and mortality rates by demographic. He needed to find out where it had spread -- _if_ it had spread outside southern Britain. He needed to get those samples under a microscope and see if the blood made more sense than the symptoms.

He turned, heading back through the ward, towards the double doors with the webbed safety glass. As Dr. Harper strode by at a fast clip, the screaming stopped, here and there, in a wide wake: the woman with sweat-matted blonde hair stopped shaking and screaming at the visions and sagged in her bed, asleep; a young man with a bent nose, broken years ago but healed, sighed with relief as he passed out. Owen's heart beat harder as he kept himself from running. The creased forehead of a thin redhead, barely thirty, relaxed slowly as she fell asleep.

Owen burst through the double doors and didn't stop, his labcoat flapping behind him. He tore the white mask off his nose and mouth and blew through triage and outside.

***

"This is insane," Owen declared, his eyes glued to the twin scopes of a powerful microscope. "This is just insane."

"What is it?" Toshiko asked, leaning over his shoulder. She had to move quickly to avoid a blow to the chin as he stood up and shrugged.

"It's a virus. Who knew?"

She gave him a look, half unimpressed, half perplexed. "This is shocking to you?"

"Well, _no_ ," he explained, drawing the vowel out a little rudely. "Obviously it explains the infection rate. But look at it, specifically the bottom of the body by the flagellum. That shouldn't be there." He paused. "The flagellum's the wiggly little tail bit."

"Yes, _I know_ ," she replied. Toshiko took her glasses off and peered into the microscope. She inspected it for several seconds, adjusting the focus and then looked back at Owen. "How do you know it's not supposed to be there?"

"It's not _doing_ anything. Virus anatomy is designed for optimum stuff-doing." He sighed. "Let's get these samples into the centrifuge. I want to know what the genes look like."

***

"Well, that doesn't make a fucking _bit_ of sense."

Toshiko leaned on the back of Owen's chair, looking over his shoulder at the computer printout of the decoded virus genes. "You weren't expecting totally random results."

"No, but I wasn't expecting something so... deliberate. It's like someone signed off on the design, but they signed in _genes_. Apparently benign ones -- did I mention the fact that viruses just _don't_ evolve vestigial parts?" Owen let out a huff of breath, cynically amused. "God signs off on His creations. Touching."

"Sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic," Jack announced without preamble, walking out of his office. "Including those genes. It's not random, but it's not God."

"Oh, and here I'd nearly got religion."

Jack traced out a series of eight pairs of letters at the end of the string of code. "That's a brand name. Caduceus."

"A brand name?" Toshiko asked skeptically. "What, first Prada for your shoes and then for your life-threatening illness?"

"They're a 29th-century corporation," Jack continued, ignoring the interjection, "specializing in medical supplies, pharmaceuticals, and most importantly, cutting-edge virology and genetics. They're based off Jupiter's four biggest moons, but they work throughout the system -- they've got a major research institute on Ganymede, and I'm willing to bet that's where our sleeping sickness is from."

"... Twenty-ninth century Jupiter?" Owen asked dubiously.

Toshiko shrugged. "There _is_ a giant Rift right through the city..."

Jack thrust his hands in his pockets and leaned against a support pillar thoughtfully. "What I don't get is why they'd sign off on a virus. They're known for _anti-_ virals; they developed the first vaccine for H.I.V."

"When was that?" Toshiko asked hopefully.

"2882." Jack shook his head; Toshiko's shoulders sagged. He continued, still deep in thought. "... So why would they put their brand on something like this? Why would they bother developing this?"

"Maybe they didn't," she suggested. "Maybe someone else created it and put 'Caduceus' on it to deflect the blame?"

"Or they could've left it _unsigned_ ," Owen observed. "Maybe they're trying to drum up customers."

Jack shook his head. "By that point, everything's signed. It would be more conspicuous without. But they'd be stupid to 'drum up customers' with a virus with their own name on it, and they're not stupid."

Owen frowned and leaned back in his chair. "Right, so how the hell do you know so much about the 29th century?"

"Part of the technology we recovered from London included a Dalek encyclopaedic database. They were time travellers. I looked it up when your results came in. Q-E-D." Jack had actually plugged the virus gene results into his wrist computer and was surprised when it spat out Caduceus as the source.

"I don't know anything about a Dalek encyclopaedia," Owen said suspiciously.

"That's because you're not cleared to know about it, so keep your mouth shut," Jack replied with a cheerful smile.

***

"I feel bloody useless," Gwen said, cutting open a currant scone. "They're having a little party up there, lab coats only."

"I know what you mean," Ianto replied. "Refill?"

Gwen smiled. "Please." He topped up her cup of coffee and she blew on it before sipping. "I don't know anything about epidemics. Seriously, what am I doing? I'm getting paid to eat scones."

"You had to make up the aliases for St. David's," he pointed out with a small smile.

"I had to make up an alias for _Tosh_ and you had to laminate the tags anyway. Scone?"

"Please," Ianto replied. He split and buttered it. "It could be worse."

"Mm?" she asked around a mouthful.

"Could be out of scones."

***

It was nearly five by the time Owen opened the door to his flat and dropped his messenger bag by the door. A grey drizzle had started and the water outside his windows was dark in the predawn twilight, the surface pock-marked by raindrops. He slung his leather jacket over the back of his sofa and toed his shoes off. His eyes ached with caffeine and computer monitors and frustration and fatigue.

The hospital had been eerie. Not just because it was full of twitching or sleeping-undead people, though that had been plenty eerie in itself. Not because he'd had the sinking feeling again, the one that comes when something obviously gone badly wrong but you don't know what or how to fix it. Not because they still painted everything that shade of soothing puke green. That still mildly bothered him: he knew the green visually neutralized the red of blood, but they always painted the walls up to chest level and he'd never been able to shake the mental image of some crazy bastard blowing an artery open all over the soothing green walls.

All the patients had been so young -- it wasn't like Owen was old and it wasn't like it was the children's burn ward or something, but twenty-somethings shouldn't really be in hospital unless they broke a leg playing sports or were getting a boob job or the like. Owen couldn't help thinking about them. The other young ones. The ones that he hadn't been able to keep his hands off of -- not that they had wanted him to! -- and that had caused his dismissal. Kerri. Jason. Anne.

Shit. Owen stripped off his t-shirt and jeans, collapsed on his bed. His body was a shadow against the bare glass of his floor-to-ceiling windows. He always got bitter thinking about his practice, the string of misfires and alleged fuck-ups that led, eventually, to Torchwood. Those bastards hadn't said a word to defend him, had they? Not a word, even after they'd begged for him to touch them.

Too late for bitterness. The thought almost made him laugh, the idea that it was too late for him to be angry. Too late to stay awake. Owen drifted off as the sun came up over the Bay.


End file.
